Science & Technology Today

Hopefully that is enough for a hungry chick. Free Gift :Count the number of fish and win a surprise gift. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty taken on Eastern Egg Rock, Maine)

Creationist will soon be running for cover as the researchers and scientists are getting very close to creating artificial life. Some of the estimates predict that they are just 3 to 10 years away from create some form of life in a laboratory environment. And truly that would be the greatest breakthrough in the scientific world. The ability to create a living cell from scratch, by chemically synthesizing all its components, is not far beyond present technology as it may seem. As per Mark Bedau , chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy three major hurdles to creating synthetic life: —A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out, allow good ones, and the ability to multiply. —A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental changes. —A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as food and then changes it into energy. Jack Szostak of Harvard Medical School, pre...

A new startup company Navio Systems based in Apple's home town of Cupertino , California is trying hard to break the hold of Apple in online music domain. Their recently launched music download website gbox is getting lot of attention and record labels like Universal and SonyBMG have started selling music on there website. Customers can buy tunes through gbox at the same price charged by market leader iTunes - 99 cents per track. gbox will also benefit from a special advertising deal with Google. The adverts, which will appear when a user searches for a particular term, such as the name of an artist, will link to the g box site. Navio Systems is hoping to finally open the iPod to other formats with a system that stores the rights associated with a musical piece, game, or movie in the file itself, according to Business Magazine. Navio software that enable its customers to offer copy-protected video content that will play on Apple's iPods . The move will create o...

The importance of IPTV is set to increase rapidly as cable operators migrate services to an all IP network and DSL service providers enhance their content capability. Service providers deploying IPTV, including AT&T and Verizon. For TV and VoD services, IPTV enables operators to consolidate network infrastructure, improve access bandwidth usage efficiency, and offer enhanced service features such as interactive programming guides (IPGs) and network-based digital video recording (DVR). IPTV can then be offered and billed as part of multi-service packages without radical changes to the customer care and billing platforms. IPTV involves the interfaces between the service-providers and network providers, as well as both Web-based and IP Multi-media Subsystem (IMS)-based approaches for added functionality. The playback of IPTV requires either a personal computer or a set-top box connected to a TV. Video content is typically compressed using either a MPEG-2 or a MPEG-4 codec and then sen...